The flames had not yet cooled on the American Health Care Act — the GOP’s seven-years-in-the-making plan to repeal and replace Obamacare — before Republican leaders had moved on to its next top priority: tax reform. And from that emphatic pivot was born a golden moment for people like me; after all, it’s not often that tax law rises to the forefront of the public consciousness. But that’s where we’re heading…maybe for mere weeks, but possibly for months or — dare I say it? — years. A time where discussions of deductions and talk of tax brackets will dominate newspaper pages, Facebook timelines, and Twitter feeds.

Sure, these rare moments serve as career validation for people who have made the ill-advised choice to spend their lives in the bowels of the tax law, but debates over reform of those laws shouldn’t be preserved solely for us. Everyone should get in on the fun, and to that end, here’s a little primer for you: five headlines you’re sure to read about tax reform as the process unfolds.

In early March, GOP leaders Kevin Brady and Paul Ryan unleashed their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, publishing proposed legislation in the form of the American Health Care Act. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released its score of the plan, and two of the primary criticisms that emerged from the report were as follows:

The plan results in an $880 billion tax cut over the next decade, with at least $274 billion of the cuts going directly into the pockets of the richest 2%, and
Medicaid would be cut by an equivalent $880 billion over the next decade, making it more difficult for low-income taxpayers to procure insurance.

Last week, the GOP released amendments to its health care bill, and in response to the shortcomings highlighted by the CBO report, the changes to the bill would add more tax breaks for the rich and further slash Medicaid funding.

Sometime in the past few days, the first two pages of President Trump’s 2005 Form 1040 mysteriously landed in the mailbox of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and tax professor David Cay Johnston. In the interest of full disclosure, the same two pages showed up at my house late last week, but they were shipped C.O.D., and I’d be damned if I was going to shell out the 49 cents.

Johnston shared the documents with Rachel Maddow and MSNBC, setting off BREAKING NEWS sirens that inspired millions of Americans to flip on the TV to watch Maddow unveil the President’s intimate — and private — financial information.

Now normally, the opportunity to ogle the President’s tax returns would not create a stir; after all, every sitting president since Nixon has published their returns as part of an unwritten agreement with the American people to be transparent and forthright. President Trump, quite famously, has deviated from that long-held practice, first refusing to release his returns during his campaign because he was “under constant IRS audit,” and then pointing to his subsequent election as a referendum that “no one other than journalists” cares about his taxes.

Of course, people DO care: over 1 million individuals signed an online petition insisting that Trump publish the missing returns, but to date, the President has resisted. This of course, has only added to the intrigue, and in today’s world, when there’s enough intrigue, there will eventually be a leak.

Last week, GOP leadership revealed its long-awaited plan to repeal and replace Obamacare by publishing the American Health Care Act. Rather than representing a unifying piece of legislation for the Republican party, however, the proposed legislation created an immediate division within the GOP, with many leading Republicans derisively calling the plan “Obamacare Lite” and others questioning the impact it would have on the number of insured individuals, or stated more appropriately, the number of insured voters in advance of the 2018 mid-term elections.

Despite the lukewarm reception with which it was met, the American Health Care Act moved through the House Ways and Means Committee along party lines; though it did require 18 hours of debate, with Democratic committee members decrying the Committee’s willingness to move the bill forward without a complete measure of its cost or the lost insured.

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office answered those questions, releasing its official scoring of the American Health Care Act, and the results are not pretty. An $883 billion tax cut, $274 billion of it going to the richest 2%. $880 billion stripped from Medicare. And 24 million fewer insured individuals over the next ten years.

Let’s take a look at how the CBO came up with the numbers it did. But first, we need to understand a bit about how Obamacare works.

“We’re going to be announcing something over the next, I would say, two or three weeks that will be phenomenal in terms of tax.”

Now, say what you will about Trump’s presidency, but to date, he’s followed through on his promises. He said we’ll have a wall? We’re getting a wall. He said he’d keep terrorists out? He’s enacted sweeping — and potentially unconstitutional — immigration reform. Twice. He said he’d drain the swamp? He…well, two out of three ain’t bad.

But where’s the tax plan? Drastic individual and business tax cuts were a huge part of Trump successful campaign, but in the first 50 days of his presidency, he has produced nothing.

In President Trump’s recent speech to Congress, he said very little about his much-anticipated plan for tax reform. One thing he did say was this:

We will provide massive tax relief for the middle class.

This promise was surely met by cheers from coast to coast, as it should have been. But it raises an interesting question: how does a middle-class taxpayer measure whether the President delivers on his promise? Do you simply view the tax cuts for the middle class in isolation? Or must the cuts be viewed in their larger context, relative to those bestowed upon the richest Americans?

The items in this blog are informational only and are not meant as tax advice. Consult with your tax advisor to determine how any item applies to your situation. A select group of Tax Professionals of WithumSmith+Brown write Double Taxation, and any opinions expressed or implied are not necessarily shared by anyone else at WithumSmith+Brown.

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